Christopher Cook: When the script for Angel Heart arrived, what made you think you really wanted to play Margaret Krusemark in the film? It's a very small, cameo performance on one level.

Charlotte Rampling: First of all because of Alan Parker, who is a friend, I've known him a long time and I admire him enormously, and then it was Mickey Rourke, and then it was the fascinating screenplay and it became irresistible. Even if it was just one big scene, you're always talking about this women, this woman holds tremendous power through the film. The film is quite astounding really.

CC: That's the point, it's her film.

CR: Almost, yeah, although she's hardly ever there.

CC: When you play that scene, you're competing with an astonishing set, crammed with detail. I wonder how easy it is acting with, but against, the décor.

CR: Well, you just don't think about it. You'd very quickly drown otherwise.

CC: It must be quite alarming to have that sort of detail around you.

CR: I don't actually look very much. I think, in a sense, it's a pity, but that's the only way I can protect myself in this business. I just look to the essential of what I have to look at, and the rest I don't see. People will say, "Did you see that?" I will say, "No. I actually didn't." So if you say to me that room was very decorated, I had no idea that it was.

It's also like that with the technicians, and all the movement and the agitation and the razzamatazz that goes around on a day's filming, if I connect into what is really happening then I'll lose what I need to be able to do what I have to do. So I blank out a lot of stuff.

CC: Was it fun to work with Rourke?

CR: Yeah. He was wonderful then too, he was really good, he was well and he was happy and it was a good moment in his life. He became a very good friend, yup.

CC: In terms of performing, what made it good to be with him at that moment?

CR: Because he is a highly instinctive, sensual actor and at that time he was at the peak of all that. He was quite remarkable. He just vibrated. He's not clever like a De Niro, who he was acting with, but he had great gifts. Has great gifts. He hasn't done much now, but then he was at the peak of his power, of his sensuality, of his animal side, of his instinctive side. Alan is a very powerful director, so he was able to keep him there, chain him in there and not let him go from there. Whereas if he's allowed to go on his own, he then gets out of control.

CC: It's an American style of acting that some people call "spit and sawdust." It couldn't be more different than your style. Because it's so overwhelming, Rourke's style, when it works, 200,000 volts in one person, how difficult is it to maintain your presence?

CR: I don't think I do badly

CC: I think you do wonderfully!

CR: In terms of voltageI think I did well there!

CC: It's just a different style, isn't it?

CR: Hmm. Is it? I don't know. I would say Robert De Niro's style is much more different, I wouldn't say Mickey and mine's was so different.

CC: Are you conscious of revealing too much of yourself. Your safety net in the end is based upon things from your own life. Sometimes taking skins off can be a dangerous business.

CR: Yeah. Quite often I didn't do it, for that reason.

CC: Can you sense, as a performer, when you taken one too many skins off.

CR: Yup.

CC: What do you do about it?

CR: You lick your wounds a bit. Stay at home.

CC: Let's talk about your wonderful portrayal of Miss Havisham. The trouble with Miss Havisham is that everybody has in mind David Lean's version of Great Expectations. Did you consciously think what am I going to do in this that isn't going to be David Lean's Miss Havisham? This old, sad, mad woman surrounded by the relics of the marriage that never was.

CR: No, because the screenplay was not that. I met all the people concerned who wanted to make that into something moreI think they wanted to put a bit of sex into Miss Havisham. She might have been dried up, but they did want to make her a bit sexy. That's what they said. "I'm yer girl, then," I said!

CC: That final line in that scene (Miss Havisham is told that she is going to marry after all) I think is wonderful. I can't think of any other way of doing it. You must have planned

CR: "Love"?

CC: Yes.

CR: You don't plan, but you know that certain lines hold immense power and immense depth, and you just hope that you're going to put what is needed behind the words. If words don't have vibration behind them, and a real feeling behind them, then they're just words. Some words are very beautiful and that word is one of the most beautiful, it's been bandied around a million times, but if you can really say it in the context of a character like Miss Havisham then it's very satisfying.

CC: I wonder if you feel that one of the problems for a female actor is that the parts don't come after a certain age. Until you become a character actress

CR: So how long do I have to wait?

CC: I wondered if you were conscious of being offered a lot of things that you really don't want to do because they're not very interesting.

CR: Well, I'm probably lucky because I'm not someone who wants to work very much! So I always feel that there is a role around for me, though I might have to wait around for nine months or a year, but I don't mind that.

CC: And preferably a role with a risk attached?

CR: Yeah. So I suppose if you really wanted to work a lot I suppose I could say yeah, where are the roles for women my age, but they seem to comeThis one in Under The Sand, François Ozon said, "No-one will want to do this role because I want to film you exactly as you are. No French film actor is going to want to do it. They're not going to want to be a) in a bathing costume and b) not very well lit, c) looking pretty terrible and all that. I want to film a woman as a woman is at your age."

CC: He also said he wanted to film "the beauty of wrinkle". So in a sense the romantic in him is there too. There is something romantic about his work.

CR: I think that when a young man of thirty-two wants to film a woman of fifty, there is something very romantic about that. He wants to film something that is not necessarily pleasing all the time, but is certainly fulfilling. So a fulfilled woman sometimes looks beautiful, and sometimes doesn't look so beautiful, but you don't have to worry about that because it's all in a dayIn a day, from the moment you wake up in the morning until the moment you go to bed, all sorts of different faces happen, and that's what he wanted. He wanted very much for the actress not to worry about anything like: "Have I got the right angle?" or "Is my stomach showing?" or "Can you see my double chin?"

CC: And you didn't?

CR: Noof course I didn't

CC: Let's ask the audience.

Question one: I think you were high voltage in Angel Heart. What was it like working with Paul Newman on The Verdict?

CR: He was high voltage. I kind of like this voltage thing we're on. He is somebody so shy and fragile. You have to be very gentle with him, perhaps you wouldn't think it. He's very self-doubting, an immensely humane man. It was the most extraordinary experience working with him, just on a human basis, I find him an exquisite human being.

Question two: You made a film called He Died With His Eyes Open, what was your experience of that?

CR: I thought it was pretty amazing, that film. I really did. As a dark, dark film. It was Robin Cook who wrote the bookdid it get released in England? Yes. It was also working with Michelle Serot, who is one of the finest French actors I think. He started on comedy and became a tremendous dramatic artist. It was one of the darkest films I've made, actually, in terms of the story and in terms of the weight. I saw it recently, I don't really watch my films, but I saw it because it was re-released somewhere.

CC: Was it well received in France?

CR: Yeah. Very well received. Very dark film. One of Jacques Deray's very good films, he's quite an unequal director, Jacques Deray.

Question three: What do you want, as a person, to happen to Marie at the end?

CR: What I feel is that she has come to accept that he husband has died. She has the evidence, the body is there, she knows that. When she sees the watch, she knows that it's her husband because you can't possibly tell from the body. She's not going to be able to stay for very long with the pain of crying and she realises that she has to mourn. When she runs off she maybe invents the fact that it might be her husband, but she knows it's not and she will eventually come to terms with the death of her husband. She will accept it. That's what I feel.

Question four: She won't end up in an asylum like her mother-in-law?

CR: No way, because she's far too proud!

CC: Is she going to marry Vincent?

CR: No. Vincent is still too "leger."

Question five: What did François Ozon need to learn, that he needed two female writers?

CR: I just felt that it needed to have a woman's femininity in it somewhere. I didn't know what at all, or what it would reveal, but when Emmanuel Bernheim came in, something else started to happen, I don't know what it was, but something else happened. I think that collaboration in writing is very important, with male or female writers, but if the subject is uniquely about a woman, I think there's something out of balance if there's not a woman that comes in and collaborates with the writing.

Question six: How important is it for you for a film to be a commercial success?

CR: I'm over the moon, actually, because there are 500,000 people in Paris that have seen Under The Sand. Quite often the films I make are difficult, a certain amount of people have seen them and they've been critically appreciated and respected, but to have a commercial success with a film like this - which is not an easy film, it's a very personal film, people's own story will be revealed a little bit through this film - it's something that makes me feel as if I've been recognised somewhere.

Question seven: You play women with secrets very often. Do you find secrets, and characters with secrets, attractive?

CR: I think what we do best, in the artistic world, are the things where we're handicapped. I'm not very good at talking and being with people, and being gregarious and outgoing. I love people, but I have great difficulty doing it. I think the reason I have secrets is because there are a lot of things I haven't been able to let out and I'm able to let them out through the screen and this medium.

I'm able to let them out in a way that if I'd been able to let them out before in a more easy, normal way it wouldn't be so effective. I think that all us people who perform and are called artists are usually very crippled people, and we use this to uncripple ourselves for a little bit of time. When people want to see your film you're over the moon because you've actually made real contact. That's something very special.

Question eight: Who is the best director that you've worked with?

CR: It's like comparing children. You can't do that. These directors are so much part of me - they've made me and helped me along the way. Some better than othersbut they've all been incredibly kind to me. Maybe they all realised that they wouldn't get anything out of me if they were unkind! I'm not answering your question in the way that you want me to because I find it difficult to be specific in that way.

It's a kind of idealistic love that I have with all these directors. They're figureheads for me. They've been part of such an essential part of my life, just for a short amount of time, but they're mythological gods up there for me. That's the way I like to feel about them, because that's the way I like to feel about my work.

Question nine: Were you nervous about performing for these great directors?

CR: No, because they're all part of my family. I don't think better or worse. The comparison thing for me has never worked in anything. I don't compare things.

Question ten: Why is the film called Under The Sand?

CR: What confuses you?

Question eleven: I don't understand what is under the sand.

CR: Well, he could be, couldn't he? The title was actually going to be the title of a short film Ozon made which was then called Regarde La Mer, but they changed titles. In France they asked about the title too. And it really annoyed François! I'll tell him - there's another one!

Question twelve: What was Robert Mitchum like in Farewell My Lovely?

CR: He was fantastic, yeah. He's the last of the great Hollywood myths. And he really lives up to it.

Question thirteen: What do you think about the look you created in Night Porter becoming so fashionable?

CR: I haven't got my braces on todayWhat do I think about it? I think it's good. No, I do - when things go into fashion it means they're important, doesn't it Christopher?

CC: I'm just imagining you at home trying on the costume

CR: I do wear braces every now and then. Madonna wanted Dirk Bogarde to be in her video

CC: Are you going to tell us what he said?

CR: Umno.

CC: I think that's one of the great lost lines of dialogue. Charlotte Rampling, thank you very much indeed.